This invention is a continuation-in-part of patent application Ser. No. 10/685,102, filed Oct. 14, 2003, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein. Patent application Ser. No. 10/685,102 discloses a method and system for communicating to sighted persons who cannot read a standard alphanumeric text, the informational content of that text. This present invention builds upon the system and method disclosed by patent application Ser. No. 10/685,102 by integrating artificial intelligence to provide cognitive support for non-reading sighted persons, thereby enabling non-reading sighted persons to interact and communicate with their surrounding environment.
Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e. artificial) system. The term is often applied to general purpose computers and to the scientific investigation of the theory and mechanics of human intelligence and cognition. The bulk of AI research is concerned with producing useful machines that can automate human tasks that require intelligent behavior. AI systems are now in routine use in many businesses, hospitals and military units around the world, as well as being built into many common home computer software applications and video games. Such non-limiting examples of AI include: scheduling resources, answering questions about products for customers, and understanding and transcribing speech. Since its inception, AI research has placed a great emphasis on providing automated solutions to practical problems, based on replicating the architecture of human cognition.
AI methods are often applied in the field of cognition, which explicitly attempts to create model subsystems of human thought processes and behavioral heuristics. In modeling human cognition, AI researchers attempt to create algorithms that mimic the human thought and learning process. AI models will examine various inputted stimuli, place the inputted stimuli in appropriate categories, and output an appropriate behavioral response based on the categorization into which the inputted stimuli lies. The algorithms created by AI researchers are intended to account for the often complex manner in which humans learn from and interact with surrounding environmental cues and stimuli.
The use of AI can be especially beneficial to non-reading sighted persons afflicted with cognitive disabilities. Various cognitive disabilities may cause a sighted person to be illiterate or unable to receive information via reading standard alphanumeric text. To aid non-reading sighted individuals physically incapable of reading standard alphanumeric text, graphic visual languages have been developed to aid communication efforts with language deficient persons. See, for example U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/685,102. While these visual languages have proven useful in enabling non-reading sighted persons to discern the meaning of standard alphanumeric text, these languages have been static and don't allow any real time dialog between the non-reading sighted person and her surrounding environment. Current visual languages convey a single piece of information at a given point in time, and are not equipped to answer any questions posited by non-reading sighted persons, or respond to a changing environment.
As a consequence, there has been a long felt need for a graphic visual language that can provide cognitive reasoning support to non-reading sighted individual on a real time basis, and that can allow the non-reading sighted individual to respond and react immediately to various environmental stimuli. The use of various artificial intelligence algorithms and models solves this long felt need. By applying various AI theories and models, it is possible for a non-reading sighted person to query a central computing system that utilizes AI, and for the non-reading sighted person to subsequently receive instantaneous information regarding the surrounding environment. The use of AI allows non-reading sighted individuals to query the system and receive outputs based on an analysis of inputted stimuli. The use of artificial intelligence enables the system to “learn” based on user inputs and to provide solutions to user posted problems via the graphic visual communicative language.